Week in Edtech, 10/20/2023, Bootcamp Visionaries with Gautam Tambay of Springboard and Shaquille O'Neal-Backed Innovations with Kyle Wallgren of Edsoma

space. And next week, we're going to come back in and do a full review of basically the whole last month of ad tech news. So enjoy these two really interesting interviews with Gautam Tambay, the CEO and founder of Springboard, talking about the bootcamp world and how their three pronged model of b2c b2b and b2c universities is really paying off. And with Kyle Wallgren, who made a big splash recently at New York edtech week by bringing Shaquille O'Neal their celebrity investor into

the fold. He has a really interesting entrepreneurial story coming out of very much non edtech into edtech and doing some really interesting work with early reading. So enjoy this episode. And we'll see you next week with a new weekend at Tech.

I like to believe I had a little more agency than that. My motivation to start the company was I saw my sister 10 years ago apply to go to grad school to learn UX design. She was a very talented illustrator at the time, and she just could not get herself to take $100,000 loan even once she got into some great schools for a master's program. And watching her go through that process to see somebody with relative

privilege. Her family isn't wealthy, but three generations have gone to college, we have a lot of access to information, watching somebody with that kind of access, all struggle to get the skills she needed to get to the career she wanted was embedded for me to think about what ways is our education system broken, and in what ways is not serving the needs of today. And that's how I got into

it. So what we do today is we enable people like my sister to take intensive online programs that are often a grad school replacement, in some cases a bachelor's degree replacement. So shorter six to nine month long intensive programs. Everyone has paired one on one with a mentor. And we get people all the way to a job in data science and cybersecurity and AI ml and machine learning cybersecurity. And we do that more direct to consumer with the

brand Springboard brand. We enable universities like the University of Washington, St. Louis and UC San Diego, create and spin up alternative credentials and do them much faster than they were on their own. And we also work with corporations. So for example, we work with Amazon and Walmart to help them rescale their warehouse workers into entry level software and data jobs through an intensive six to nine month long Springboard program.

really cautious. You're really thoughtful about measuring outcomes.

transformational. And what that means is it either leads to a meaningful career outcome, like a job change, or a promotion, or at least a real behavior change. And so that's we're very focused on that area. So there are lots of lots of ways you can learn online, there are plenty of content libraries, for example, that you can go to, and, you

know, watch a few videos. And if you want to learn a pivot table, to build a pivot table in Excel, you know, you don't need us, you can go to YouTube, you can go to Udemy, you can go to plenty of resources. If you want to become a data scientist, if you want to become an artist, you know, change behavior, and start really building skills that you didn't have before and show up differently in a workplace. That is when we can really make an

impact. And the way we do that is by bringing a layer of humans support. We believe that transformational learning needs humans, in addition to a

curriculum. And so we pair every single student with a mentor from the industry, often with career coaches, with student advising, there's multiple pillars of human support, and to that flipped classroom model where people are learning the content on their own, but really having meaningful one on one personalized interactions with various industry professionals and people who are in their corner. That's what really creates the transformational

impact of behavior change. And that's the core of the model. And to that, what we do is it lets us do something we call one size fits one, we were able to personalize that scale

remained and thrived. Talk a little bit about that career guarantee and the impact that it's had on your journey,

programs. And we decided that if that's what they wanted, you know, let's really put our money where our mouth is and say, Well, if we are not able to do this for you, then we should give you your entire money back. And what it did is it did two things, it helped us stand apart from many in the market, because we were willing to say, Well, if we don't deliver the outcome that you're here for, then we don't deserve to earn your

money. And so that really is from a student messaging and profit standpoint, we had a we had a stronger student progress, which helped us attract the best of the students. What it also did was it forced us to build a really good product, because our incentives were completely aligned with with our students. And I've always believed that in education, you win. Companies that win are the brands that win in the long run, they build brands on the back of great student outcomes, it's got to be

important. That's how you stand out in the long run. If you think about the best education brands you you can think of, that's what they've done, they've built really phenomenal student outcomes. And then they build a great brand on the back of those grades to outcomes. And the job guarantee forced us to align our long term incentive with the student versus what's often been the feeling of for profit education is you've got a short term incentive that doesn't align that long term

incentive. And that's where a lot of a lot of for profit education organizations have stumbled.

universities. And then now you've been able to parlay that with corporations, and it makes me you know, think about the entrepreneurs that Alex and I talk to all the time. You know, we hear all the time investors say focus, focus, focus, you need to have one business model, you've actually had now demonstrated success with a three prong business model approach, a b2c a b to you universities, or maybe maybe that we could call that big government and a b2b corporate. How difficult is that to pull

off? What kind of advice would you give to others? And, you know, what are the pros and cons of that kind of three pronged business approach?

by 2030. And that's our focus how we go about doing that. We're open to it. But again, you know, how broad we can widen our aperture has varied by stage. So I would say for the first few years of springboards existence, we were extremely focused on the direct to consumer Springboard channel, and we did nothing else. And in fact, when we began, we actually only started with a focus on data science.

And for a very long time, people, you know, investors would pass on us because they said, you're only one, you're a one trick pony, you only know data science, this market is too small. And what we did is we became the best by far the best school in data science, there was not a lot of people playing in that space. And that gave us a space to build a model that was really effective, and only when we perfected it, then we started to say, Okay, let's do consumer, but across different

verticals. So we added UI UX design, we added cybersecurity, and so on. In fact, we were very late to enter software engineering, because we wanted to get our model right first, before we entered, what was a red ocean market at the time. So

that was the initial focus. But then once we nailed the model, and we also realized that to get to our goal of transforming a million lives, you're going to have to reach ways and students in ways that we haven't before, we started to add additional go to markets, but again, focused on the same product offering in

different channels. I will say one thing, you know, we in fact, there was a time when we visited before we raised we'd already raised a Series A and we raised a total of seven or $8 million to date at that point. And we tried expanding into b2b at that point. And we walked away learning that massive opportunity, we can do a great job at it, but we just don't

have the resources right now. So we actually pulled back from b2b and only started a few years later, once we had more resources and had raise more capital. So I do believe focus really matters. And then how you add, you know, verticals, or go to market channels is a matter of sequencing as and when you have the right resources and the

right team. I will say that that said now that we are in a position where we have three business units, it creates a lot of resilience in the business, especially in our transactional revenue business, like like education often tends to be it gives us you know, we were able to endure business cycles much better. I wanted

Tell us how you balance this type of work with the business work and the much more revenue driven stuff that you do to keep the lights on for sure.

it can be. We our belief is that creating diverse cohorts and bringing people in and unlocking access to education for those who otherwise wouldn't have it in ways that are sort of balanced with the business right actually is long term beneficial for the business, even though we may be leaving some profits on the table in the near term. Because if again, one of the things that's happened is on our sar b2c original business has, but 25% of people don't have bachelor's degrees in our BYU

business. So University branded business, almost 50% don't have bachelor's degrees, and then in our enterprise business with Amazon and Walmart, almost 80% do not have bachelor's degree. So as we've expanded, we've been able to reach populations that

are underserved. And what we are learning is that that expansion is forcing us to improve our product because what works for somebody who's got a master's degree and is has had their most recent educational experience three years ago, does not work for somebody who has not had meaningful educational opportunities since high school, and that may have been 1520 years ago. And so it's forcing us to refine our product to be able to serve a larger audience.

And we believe that that in the long term will help us win because we will be able to serve audiences that nobody else can, effectively.

space is going writ large? And how are you thinking about navigating it as the CEO springboard? Yeah,

to save for college. And the reason we made that decision is because we believe by the time our son is 18, they are going to be many alternatives to college. And just as we can imagine a world where somebody went, were choosing to drive or not is going to be an option, because you can have self driving cars, going to college will be an option, you can go to college or not go to college and still have a great white collar career. That's the world and sort of foresee. And we're getting

there, right. So what the path could look like, for example for him is, you know, he might come out of high school decide to do an apprenticeship for a year where somebody pays him while he's on the job. He's also learning a couple years into that he might decide he wants to get a university credential, but

not a four year degree. So he gets a six months, you know, Springboard University branded credential, he gets that, then he goes and spends two or three years in another job, and then maybe the employer decides to invest in him into a six, six or 12 month program to help them get another job, and so on and so forth, I think it's going to be a very, very the job that he's gonna have at, say, 35 doesn't exist today. Right. So there's almost no point and likely will not exist even when

he is 18. And so that's the future we envision. And so I see a very, very bright future for what I call the general alternative credentials market. Because this idea that you can consume, all of your education is a four year bachelor degree and a two year master's program, all until you are 27, or 28, and then have one job for 30 years, that's just gone. That's how my parents lived. That doesn't

exist anymore. Right? So given that sort of very long future and our long term very, very bullish on this market as a lot of people in our space, and then it's just a question of the, you know, how do you navigate the near term challenges to make sure that you survive? And I've always believed that changing change in education happens over decades, not over, you know,

months or quarters or years. And so the short answer to how I think about navigating these short term dislocations, whether it's the COVID Bumblebee, also, you know, the ups and downs, or the near term headwinds we are seeing with the uncertainty in the economy is most of our relentless focus on incredible student outcomes. And then just make sure you live to see another day, right, there's a lot to be said, for just being around at the end of the day, and not making rash decisions

and surviving. And so we're very relentlessly focused right now on profitability and making sure that we're around and we've seen a lot of players in our space fail and take on too many risks. And, you know, while we all we love taking calculated risks has been bored, at the same time, we place a very high premium on just being around to see another day. Yeah,

sense. And I do think this is the difference when you're a startup and you're still trying to find that core and that product market fit, you know, you're in the business of taking risks and going and really trying to leap out of your comfort zone with a high probability of failure rate. And so it's so interesting to talk to you because in so many ways, you've not only proved the core value in a consumer channel, but now in a university in a

corporate channel. So this is really about you know, that 15 year horizon. So Alex has a two year old at home, I've got a seven and 11 year old, and I think we're in the same boat thinking about, okay, like, what is the future of grammar and work? What is the value of university? What is the ROI and I'm so glad and thankful that Springboard exists, yeah, to increase those opportunities. So Alex, anything you want to say in closing,

opportunity. So I have a feeling that a lot of these 529 funds that people are starting for their kids now are going to be used on a series of alternative credentials on lifelong learning on all sorts of stuff that might be pretty different than the traditional, hey, you know, four year college at 18 World. I'm definitely with you on that.

anything with my kids. And one day when my daughter came to me asking me to read her book, I just didn't know how to do it, you know, I went and I found a product called caribou that, you know, put us together and allowed us to like spend some time engaging together. But what I realized in doing that was how horrible a reader I was. And it dawned on me when I was stumbling in my daughter's like, Dad, wouldn't it be cool if the book would tell you what you're

getting wrong. So when a six year old points out how horrible of a reader you are, you start to identify that you really have a problem. So at that time, I decided that I needed to look for a better solution to try and help me with teaching my kids because I know how my struggles was. And there just wasn't anything out there that would really support a parent at home that struggled with reading that still wanted to make it a something that was important to

their kids. So I just decided that I was gonna I was gonna do it. I had a manufacturing company at the time, we had signed our biggest contract today, it was like $48 million that week, and I walked out and told my partners that I just had a change of heart and I wanted to I wanted to focus on reading. And I asked them if they'd buy me out, they looked at me like I was crazy. And I parted ways and focused on this for about three years now. I had no experience in education, no experience in

technology. But just something told me that I needed to I needed to work on this.

or a fixture of sorts. So I thought that building an education company was the exact same way as building any other company, you know, you wake up in the morning, you put your pants on one leg at a time, and you go figure out the solutions to the problems. What I've learned from doing this is because I'm blind to what the real directions are, it's probably given me an advantage. Because if I really knew the direct paths that a person was supposed to take, I think it would have intimidated me and

slowed me down. So to answer your question on like, how I've gone about it, it's like completely blind, trusting my gut and trying to find people that are best in class to surround myself with all the time. So when I have a question that it needs a serious answer, I can lean on them. And that's how we've been fortunate enough to get the traction that we have this early on.

my mindset. And what I did is I wanted to like keep kids engaged through content, a lot of things are gamified now, and when you look at like the stats behind what makes a better reader, it's not gamifying reading, it's putting in the time, right 20 minutes a day, five days a week for eight months will increase children's reading by a single grade level. And when I saw some of the other solutions, they

were very gamified. So if you're spending, you know eight of the 10 minutes playing a game you're going to be reading forever to try and increase reading. So what I wanted to do was find a way that kids would be engaged naturally and after seeing like how like Roblox when and how kids are playing games like that. It was really like customizable for the individual person, right? Like they could go find a game that fit their needs or their interests, and they would be engaged in it for

hours. So I thought that if we could do content the same way, and provide kids content, that we'd be able to do that, but we wanted to be able to tie it into a resource that would work for teachers and parents. So then we started identifying how curriculum worked, or how curriculum would teach things.

So we would, what we do with AI is we take the curriculum content that's supposed to be being taught, we take where a child's at in real time, because we can provide an oral readability Lexile score, and grade the student all in real time. And then we take our content library and we and their interest level. And we find the issues that they're having and pull that all together. So we're constantly putting content of interest in front of the users based off of where they're at in

their reading journey. And because of those things, we believe that we've seen the increase on average, and we're starting our pilots, we're seeing, you know, five to seven minutes engagement on the app from our users. Now those same struggling readers, because they're picking the content we're seeing anywhere between 20 to 27 minutes a day, and they're willing to do it. The other thing that we learned really early on was that kids don't like hearing negative things

from authoritarian figures. So the part that we've gamified within the product was how the app communicate with the child when they got something wrong. It's easy to hear that you failed a level on a game and go back and redo it, for some reason that comes naturally to kids. But when a parent says you did it wrong, last thing you want to do is go redo it. So when the app tells you, you know, you need to go back and

practice these things. It just allows kids to get excited about and they're like, Okay, I've gotta go play level one over again, you know, and then then they go through, and they want to see how they're improving. So we just took bits and pieces that I felt like I identified with as a non-reader early on in my career as a kid in school, but, and then just turned it into what it could be in 2023.

gonna hate. But that really has raised your visibility in the space in a powerful way. And for this message about reading and personalizing and engaging reading, can really break through the noise. How have you thought about that press coverage? How have you leveraged it? And how are you managing that to propel the company forward?

they want to put in. And then they have resources that they're willing to bring to the table. The difference is that Shaquille is one of the largest voices in America, you know what I mean? So we're, that's really early and physically, yeah, physically. So where that's really helped us was getting introductions into networks, you know, his team brought a lot of relationships. So early on, even before we had a contract with Shaquille they started making introductions to people that can

help. And so that really helped because it did take about a year of due diligence to get all the paperwork finalized with Shaquille and one of the things that people don't realize is that, you know, it wasn't just an investment for Shaquille it was his brand and reputation alongside it. So they did a really deep dive into who I am, who my teammates are, you know, really deep because they didn't want it affecting Shaquille as a personal brand in any way

either, right? So we did do a heavy, heavy amount of due diligence in order to get through that. But since then, you know, you guys got to hear Shaquille at TechCrunch. You know, he's all in he wants to make sure that his legacy isn't just basketball, but if he could help make an impact and reading across America, he would feel like that'd be a better legacy to have than being an all star

basketball player. So when you have somebody in your corner that is that passionate about the space, it really helps a lot. Bring a lot of visibility, you know, we walked into TechCrunch you know, with hundreds of people knowing who we are. Now there's 1000s, maybe 10s of 1000s. We get you know, people asking questions every day reaching out, the investor conversations have gotten

better, actually. And you even mentioned Ashton Kutcher were actually one of his teammates reached out this week to start looking at the product as well. So there is a lot of people this really hits home with them.

fast. And it can be really challenging for a topic like kids reading, to really find that right channel. And so these kind of earned media opportunities can be quite profound. And I don't know what the terms are with Shaq. But, you know, sometimes people don't realize that some of the more well known investors, they're putting in like 25k, or 10k, it can be really small amounts, but the PR value can be quite incredible. I know Steph, curry

invested in Guild. And that was a really important move for guild because they had been in a very b2b space. And it was their chance to kind of raise awareness about their product. So you know, as you look going forward, what's the vision for Ed Soma? How do you think about scaling? You know, what works in getting kids to do, you know, go to the gym for their reading and do more reps and get into that regular practice? What's the vision?

play. One of the things that we negotiated with Shaquille was making it affordable that inner city communities could afford to have access to that that was really important to them. But it was once we started identifying how expensive it was to go and do the consumer thing, like you said, you know, it just wasn't going to work on our runway, it was like we're seeing like anywhere between 20 to $27, a customer per customer acquisition through Facebook marketing, Google Marketing,

that sort of thing. So when we started, like breaking down, like what we did really differently, compared to everybody else, and what our landscape looked like, we took a different approach, we realized that new teachers were coming to the space, because we have a major shortage in educators right now. And one of the things that we do extra special is around how we identify where our readers are at, and the support that we provide for non readers.

So you know, a non reader doesn't necessarily mean that you can't read, but you can't teach reading, these teachers that are coming to school aren't coming with the same education that they were in the past. So we add a level of support to our teachers as well. So they can feel confident that they're passing this information on to the students properly. So that was one of the things that we identified that we do really

well. But then there was one other thing that stood out to us is in the past, a lot of testing was done manually. So somebody would go in and they'd listen to a reader read out loud. With our AI, we identify all those things. And we can do it at a 97% accuracy level. So the same tests that say dibbles, or amplified would do, we can do that 90 seconds now. And we do it at a 97% accuracy rate. And it's one of the most equitable testing tools that we know have

on the market right now. So there is and you know, the way that it looks to everybody is that we are a consumer based product, we do have it available for consumers. But we do have a huge presence in the schools as well. Yeah, thanks

incredible use case for AI. So I guess what does the next you know, two years to five years look like for Ed so Minh, and help our listeners understand your vision for how this will evolve?

If you look at some of the greatest businesses in history, you know, Disney, Amazon, what were the things that they did right to be able to either grow into these monstrosities or businesses that we've learned to grow and trust, you know, Disney connected with us at a young age, you know, 567 So now Disney can make these mistakes, and we look at them are like, shame on you. But because you've been loyal to us to our complete childhood, we go back and we

trust them, right. One of the things that Amazon did great was customer obsession, right. But what they didn't do was align with five, six and seven year old kids. it. So what I wanted to do was take like the model of Disney and the model of Amazon and combine it together, I wanted to be able to build trust with my customer today and bring them so much value, that they'd be willing to work with us the

rest of their life. So our goal is to focus on bringing kids up to speed and one of the most important areas that I feel like in their lives, and that's reading, if you have reading and math, you can go anywhere you want in the world, I don't care about the rest of it. But those two things are fundamental. So we're going to focus on growing with our customers today through reading, we want to be able to grow with them through their social engagement and social awareness. Because we do believe

that the world is changing. And I think that it's important for us to teach kids at a young age, what you know, web three is going to look like and how their lives are going to change. So we want to be able to grow with them in that standpoint. And then through our marketplace, I want them to be able to think about when, as they're drawing the things that they're going to need that Ed Soma can provide

them for them. But we also want to be able to provide a marketplace in the near immediate future for our teachers, because we know that they're pulling resources out of their pocket, and they shouldn't have to. So if we can get more user engagement through our reading, and get more relationships, that we should be able to provide a better solution for teachers not have to pull into their pocket because we know that they're not

getting paid. So if we look at, you know, the next 357 years, that's our goal is to roll out in those areas and be able to provide resources for our kids and users in all different assets of the education journey.

background. And I think there's an advantage to that, in some ways, as you mentioned, that you're not intimidated by the idea of selling to schools, which scares a lot of entrepreneurs out of that tech or, you know, not intimidated by going up against incumbents like dibbles and amplify. And I'm really impressed at everything you've been doing so far. It obviously goes far beyond the shack headlines. We really appreciate you being here with

us. And I think we'll all be keeping an eye on what Ed summit does over the next year. The education social marketplace. Appreciate, appreciate.

around education right now. And bringing visibility to those questions is the most important thing we can do. So we're about to launch our edsoma, mom's Facebook group as well. And we'd love to have people join us there. Awesome. Wonderful.